Move in day: Hundreds of college students move downtown into Flint's two residence halls

Ryan Garza | The Flint JournalUniversity of Michigan-Flint volunteer Laura Macko helps a freshman student unload his belongings while moving in to the Residence Hall of Uof M-Flint on Wednesday.

This story has been updated from an earlier version

FLINT -- It was a quieter change that swept through the city Wednesday as a record number of college students moved into Flint's two residence halls -- bringing a fresh wave of hope that a longtime auto town could transform into a college town.

Hope that this will be the year when old and new city restaurants see younger faces in their lunch and dinner crowds. Hope that they will spill into Saginaw Street, help draw businesses and spark a ripple effect that injects new energy into a city desperately seeking revival.

But in the second year of residence hall life in Flint, a much more muted hope imbued the city -- even with a record 550 students living downtown this year.

Area businesses aren't expecting the city's biggest college move-in day to translate into a silver-bullet boon.

"I think the perception was that these kids were going to come in and help a lot of our businesses," Brown Sugar Cafe co-owner Julie Prince said as a stream of downtown professionals piled into her brick-walled cafe in the morning.

"Everyone thinks with all these kids, I should be jampacked. They say in Ann Arbor, there are always kids in the coffee shops. Right now, they haven't made any difference in my business, but it's a step in the right direction.

"We're just going to have to wait and see."

Giant blue carts crammed with hair products, microwaves, body pillows and cereal boxes flooded First Street as roughly 150 freshmen moved into University of Michigan-Flint's First Street Residence Hall, which has 310 total residents.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away on Saginaw Street, a former landmark hotel took on new life as the Riverfront Residence Hall. Families clutching bags and bins of college living essentials took turns riding elevators in the 16-story facility, which opened this year and will have 250 residents in two weeks.

The First Street Residence Hall finally opened at UM-Flint last year after years of setbacks and delays, a move-in day that came with fanfare and big hype.

And expectations for the first-ever batch of students to experience dorm life in downtown Flint were high -- maybe too high.

Despite efforts to introduce college students to downtown eateries and Flint activities, such as the Cultural Center, few businesses saw many of them.

While many of their peers went home on the weekends, UM-Flint resident students Jenny Serwach, 19, and Esther Akinola, 18, stayed in the residence hall.

But they said "90 percent" of their time was on campus, mostly hanging out in the university center with friends, in their rooms or participating in campus activities, such as Greek life.

Only once did they remember getting coffee downtown, and they rarely ate there since prepaid meal plans could be used only on campus.

"There's definitely more stuff going on. It's less of a ghost town," said Serwach of Troy, who will live in UM-Flint's residence hall again this year and who hopes to venture out more into the city.

But move-in day "is not as much fun as last year because they're not making as much of a fuss over us," she joked.

By next fall, when a second phase of Riverfront is complete and college apartments open up at the former Durant Hotel, city leaders expect 1,000 students to be living downtown.

In less than a year, an upscale pub, a pizza place, a tapas bar and a jazz club have popped up along the city's main-street bricks -- and some students have noticed

"I didn't think Flint was so cool before, but downtown has really picked up" said UM-Flint sophomore Onimisi Barton, 19, of Flushing, as she lugged belongings into her Riverfront suite.

"I'm so jazzed to be living here."

Mark Hoffman, who opened Hoffman's Deco Deli & Cafe on Garland Street last year, said he anticipated many more college-age customers after the residence halls opened.

He's crossing his fingers that Riverfront, which is closer and doesn't require meal plans, could start making a difference.

"I rarely saw students from the dorms in here. Myself and other businesses, we're all hoping for the best," he said. "I think (students) represent the early stages of becoming a university town. I'm hoping they represent a new era."

A blur of maize T-shirts lit up First Street as second-year residence students at UM-Flint helped freshmen move in. More helpers and fewer new residents might have led to a smaller crowd and sparser hallways this year.

"I expected a lot more chaos," said UM-Flint freshman Emily Clairmont, 18, of Lapeer as a volunteer crew helped her unload boxes of kitchen, bedroom and bathroom gear.

She added that she plans to walk around to see the city but that she hadn't even heard about Flint's college town efforts.

Just a five-minute walk away, Flint native Christian Harden, 18, laughed with roommates as they checked out their apartment-style suite in the Riverfront facility.

As a Flint resident attending Mott Community College, Harden never imagined living away from home so close to home.

"This makes it more like a college experience because you have dorm life," she said. "It's like you're going to a university instead of a community college. They needed this here.